Hi, I'm back! Did you miss me? My cat sure did! But that's
because she depends on me for food and water, and since none of
you do I can't imagine why I'm looking for emotional support
from a bunch of people I don't even know. Screw you anyway!

I'm kidding of course. That was just pro forma hostility, I'm
all relaxed from having been on the one week of vacation working
two jobs like a two job dog all year long affords me, and
consequently I'll be drained of the desire to hate you for at
least another few days. Plus, I don't even know what 'pro forma'
means!

And yes I damn well do work two jobs! My job job, the one with
the regular paycheck, health benefits and obsequious, soul
crushing fawning to authority that society (not to mention the wife!) demands, and freelancing, which is what this is, the
creation of content that you all receive free of charge, which
is why I usually hate you, a reaction I find fully justified.
You subscribe to HBO which you never watch except for late
night, watered down, boob porn 'documentaries' when your family
is asleep. I don't see why you can't throw me a few bucks now
and then.

So! That being said, I bet you are just DYING to know what I did
on my summer vacation, and being as I am so relaxified from it,
I'll share. It beats the hell out of coming up with an actual
idea for an article.

PACKING

It's really, really important that your wife and kids bring as
much of their stuff on vacation as is physically possible to
cram in your car without causing structural damage, and there's
a very good reason too. It keeps you from bringing anything you
want beyond underwear, socks and if everyone is lucky, a bathing
suit. But that's okay, I can always get what I need when I get
there, because I never, never vacation anyplace they don't have
liquor stores.

TRAFFIC

Boy, oh, boy, did we ever see a lot of traffic! It's a shame I'm
not a traffic enthusiast. If I enjoyed slow moving vehicles the
way some people enjoy birding, I'd have been as ecstatic as an
avid bird watcher! That's an idea that might make sense if not
for the facts that bird watchers are an insufferable bunch of
stammering binocular fetishists and that there is no such thing
as a traffic enthusiast. My family and I killed time with
several classic car games like 'Twenty Questions', 'I
Spy', 'One-hundred bottles of Beer on the Wall' and
'If You Kids Don't Stop
Singing that God Damn Song, Daddy Will Show you Something Very
Unpleasant a Beer Bottle is Good For.' Later the kids napped and
I daydreamed about how cool it would be if I'd spent a lifetime
training as a contortionist so I could roll down my window and
twist my body into a shape that would allow me to pee into
expensive convertibles as they drifted past at five miles an
hour.

THE BEACH HOUSE

Finding a beach house that has both enough room for me and my
family, my brother and his family, my Mom and her 'fancyman'
(His term, blame him) AND that we can afford is challenging. By
'challenging' here, I mean if you don't leave with scabies there
really isn't much to complain about. On the other hand, if I
stop complaining just because there's nothing to complain about,
I will have nothing to write. Why? Because I am a 'one trick
pony' writing wise. I say 'writing wise' so that you will not
confuse it with the 'one trick pony' I believe I wrote about at
some point in connection with a family vacation I took to Mexico
that was not really a family vacation in that my family was not
with me and I was not vacationing so much as falling off the
wagon. If I have never written about that particular episode and
the painful life lessons associated with it, or written about it
but never mentioned the 'one trick pony' I ran into, I guess you
could say I'm sorry I brought it up now, and hats off to the
Mexican Emergency Medical services who at least in this case
were far more professional than one would imagine. Did I mention
the group that stayed at the house right before us left a truly
impressive number of empty beer bottles in the recycling and
apparently peed down the central air conditioning grate whenever
the bathroom got too busy? 'Cause I was not okay with that.

LEARNING ON VACATION ISN'T JUST FOR KIDS

Never stop learning, that's my motto. I try to do some
educational stuff every vacation, and not just for the kids. For
instance, did you know dolphins let one hemisphere of the brain
sleep at a time, so they don't drown? That was a new one on me,
and pretty amazing. Here's another thing I learned: Sleeping in
the alley behind the beach house is fairy uncomfortable, but
kids on vacation want you to get up early and take them to the
beach. Could they give a shit what size your hangover is? They
could not.

THE BEACH

Sun screening your kids is a huge pain in the ass, but it's
nothing compared to having badly sunburned kids. The wife is
Irish, so we use SPF 50 on the kids, which works better than
either the traditional folk remedy, a paste made from beer and
potatoes, or telling them ignorant, racist jokes. For myself,
I'm pretty casual with the sunscreen, because A.) I'm swarthy
and/or dirty, and B.), skin cancer is as good a way as any
to check out early on the endless series of hassles and
headaches called life, and your family can collect your life
insurance, leaving them somewhat less bitter than if you hang
yourself.

DRINKING

It occurs to me that I joke about excessive drinking in a lot of
my work. It's possible I've lead you to believe that I am an
irresponsible drinker, perhaps even an alcoholic. Nothing could
be further from the truth. While I certainly have a drink now
and then, you should remember that I'm a humorist, and so I
exaggerate and make substitutions. Many times when I write about
being 'drunk' or 'hung over', I'm just taking poetic license
with an incident that actually involved drugs, firearms or a
wide variety of questionably legal physical practices.

WATCHING THE 'SUN SET'

You watch the sunset. I am watching college girls in bathing
suits. Thanks to the miracle of mirrored sun glasses, I can
watch them all I like without my wife and kids being any the
wiser, unless they read this which seems unlikely considering
the esteem in which they hold my 'career'. And quite frankly I
can watch whatever the hell I want as long as I don't touch, at
least that's what my parole officer says. I wish he'd have also
said that while watching I shouldn't make fire engine noises as
he'd have spared me some embarrassment and himself some
paperwork.